I usually stay away from price predictions, but this time I couldn't help it. Just published "10 reasons why bitcoin will hit $100.000 in 2021".

Share it with a normie friend, maybe he/she will understand the value proposition of

Reason no. 1: during its 12 year-old existence, Bitcoin has performed a lot better as a store of value than gold.

Reason no. 2: Bitcoin is easier and less expensive to transfer than gold. This one is pretty self-explanatory, as gold is heavy and expensive to secure.

However, I believe that we should look up to gold a lot more often & look down to USD less

Reason no. 3: Bitcoins can be carried across borders a lot easier than gold and cash.

It's simple, really. With only a general-purpose electronic device (phone, laptop), piece of paper, or even 12 words that you memorize, you can move your wealth in a different country.

Reason no. 4: Bitcoin transactions cannot be censored.

In a world where PayPal and Visa can dictate your policy as a business and can shut you up from expressing political opinions, Bitcoin has a lot of value.

1/21 The pros and cons of cryptocurrencies with an immutable, decentralized, public blockchain, why banks aren't going away, and what that means for XRP.

A thread. 👇

2/21 When I got into crypto, one of the first things I learned was that the blockchain is immutable. Once something is stored on it, it can't be changed. Once you decide to make a transaction, nobody can reverse your decision, not even the State. This gives you real power.

3/21 The blockchain is also public. Anyone with the right software can view every transaction on it. This keeps people honest and builds trust b/c everyone knows everyone else can audit the blockchain and ensure everything is on the up-and-up.

4/21 A good blockchain is also decentralized. No individual, company or State can exert control over it independently. Without consensus, things cant't change, and that kind of monetary stability is exactly what we need to stop the current brrrrr of inflationary money printing.

5/21 Crypto also offers you the ability to "be your own bank". You don't have to pay high fees or keep your money in inflationary fiat that's losing value every year. Want to send money to another country? Open an app and make it happen. Fast, cheap, no bank required.

1/21 Don't fear it, secure it.

A thread on creating a secure #Bitcoin backup with the Hodlr Disks from @hodlrswiss.

If you value permissionless money & the ability to transact without being censored then self-custody & get your bitcoin out of third party control.

2/21 This thread is the short version of a more detailed article which can be found on my

3/21 Covered here is unboxing, setting up, & torching the Hodlr Disks made by @hodlrswiss. In Nov. Hodlr Swiss reached out to see if I would be interested trying their new stainless steel backup. It looked really cool so I said "hell

'Twas the night before Christmas, and try though they may
Not a token was mooning, not even AAVE
Market buys getting sent by the apes without care
In hopes that new all-time highs soon would be there

Our traders were summoned post-haste from their beds
While visions of making bank danced in their heads
SBF in his sweatshirt, and I in my tee
Had just downed something we're gonna label "coffee"

And amongst all the chaos, amongst disarray
Amongst the red numbers borne out of the fray
From all of the carnage arose one big loser
A coin with a regulatory accuser

For days, XRP has been in the gutter
Because of the claims from Jay Clayton the FUDder
U.S. folks had to spew their positions before
The exchanges could manage to shutter the door

Exchanges like Coinbase -- they threw up their hands
What to do when your government comes with the bans?
To delist or restrict? Or just pause for a while?
It was clear they'd react -- that's Coinbase's style

We had a really good year at
@BitsikaAfrica
so I'm very happy to share with you. Our numbers from 1st January 2020 to 1st January 2021.

1. Volumes. We processed a total of $39,953,115 in 2020. This total came from an addition of $18,872,474 (in deposits)...

+ $17,890,807 (in payouts) + $3,189,834 (internal peer-to-peer transfers). These volumes are from self-determined, autonomous [successful] transactions that users initiated and performed themselves. We did NOT count system transactions that users did not initiate.

Compare that to the $974,864 we processed in 2019.

2. Transactions. We processed a total of 268,430 individual [successful] transactions. These numbers are from self-determined, autonomous transactions that users initiated and performed themselves. We did NOT count system transactions that users did not initiate.

Of the said successful transactions, 21,418 were internal peer-to-peer [successful] transactions. The rest are a combination of deposit and payout transactions. Compare that to the 4,832 [successful] transactions we did in 2019.

I started learning about Bitcoin in February. Ten months later, I’ve changed more than I could ever imagine changing in a year. Let’s review.

How Bitcoin fixes me: A thread from a class of 2020 pleb.

Bitcoin has opened up many rabbit holes to me. I’m learning more about money, economy, history, spirituality, religion and diet than I could ever have expected. It’s also personally changed me by lowering my time preference. Let’s go through this.

Money, 1/2
Ten months after starting this journey, I have more money than I could have ever imagined having as a poor student. I also have less of an urge to spend than I’ve ever had. Except for essentials, I’ve spent less during this year than I used to spend in a month.

Money, 2/2
This is partly NgU technology and partly a lack of spending. But it’s impacted me on more than the monetary front. I’ve become much less materialistic as a result. I used spend hours drooling over the stuff I could buy. I've never wanted to spend money less than now.

Economy 1/6
Ten months ago, I was an avid socialist. I just didn’t understand how anyone could vote right, except for selfish reasons. Mind you, this was after six years of both economics and management basics in the highest level of Dutch high school.

Bitcoin recently hit $34,000 yesterday when as recent as October 10th, it was $11,000

Here’s some unsolicited advice: If you feel you have “bad luck” with investing; i.e. you feel that “if you buy Bitcoin today, the price of Bitcoin will drop”; don’t buy in.

Here’s why I say so

I try to never categorically give financial advice because I’d rather show people how I’d make decisions if I were in their shoes and I like (prefer) people to think for themselves and consciously make decisions they feel is best for them or decisions they can live with and not

just go off what some random person on the internet says BUT I’ll make an exception this time and tell you this, if you think you have bad luck with investing, don’t buy in. Here’s why:

People that feel they have bad luck with investing often have 3 things in common:

1. Fear:

This fear might be informed from bad experiences they’ve had in the past or it might be some irrational fear but they have high fear of losing. If you feel like you have bad luck with investing, anything (good/bad) that happens to your investment is going to feed into that fear.

In fact, you could go as far as looking for anything that would confirm your fear that you’ve made a bad decision. You’ll suddenly start seeing news articles saying that asset will drop, you’ll watch the charts and any small drop in price would confirm that fear.

2. Because of

I've received many questions from people considering to set up a #Bitcoin multisig wallet but confused about the backup process, what should be backed up, and why.

🧵So here's a thread on backing up multisig wallets - what, why, and how.

The main caveat in a multisig wallet is that, while you need only a threshold of devices (ie. 2 of 3, 3 of 5, etc.) to sign a transaction, losing access to even a single device could potentially prevent you from being able to spend the funds - if you don't back up properly!

The reason is that (usually) in order to make a Bitcoin transaction, it is not enough to be able to sign it, but you also need to provide the "terms for spending", that is, the Script (code) that is used to lock the coins.

That's because the full script is usually not stored directly on the blockchain, but only as a hash (a unique identifier of it).
Then on spending, you need to provide both the original script code which matches that hash, and satisfy any condition that the script may include.

In a single key wallet, this is trivial.

The script is composed of the public key of your wallet and a few standard commands - and satisfying it requires the signature for that key, so both the script and signature can be constructed by having access to that one private key.

This is the argument for a 5% allocation to Bitcoin.

It’s a summary of Wences Casares’ blog post written nearly two years ago (with direct quotes copy pasted).

Part one: Why Bitcoin could hit $1 million

Part two: Why you should buy Bitcoin

Here we go! 👇👇👇

0/ First, if you don't know Wences, you should.

He founded Xapo, a Bitcoin custodian in 2014.

He's also a board member at Libra, PayPal, and Kiva.

But most importantly, he's responsible for bringing thousands of people into Bitcoin.

I'd recommend his podcast with @laurashin

1/ PART ONE

Bitcoin right now is similar to the Internet in 1994.

You don't need to know how the Internet works to understand it.

You don't need to know how Bitcoin works to understand it.

Investors who understand this will have an advantage over investors who don't.

2/ Up until Bitcoin, all computer platforms belonged to a person, company, or government.

Those platforms had to obey the will of their owners and the rules of the jurisdiction where they resided.

Bitcoin takes control away from the owners.

3/ A sovereign only obeys its own rules, no one can impose rules on a sovereign.

Kings and Queens used to be sovereign.

Then nation states became sovereign.

Now, for the first time, a computer platform has the aspiration to be sovereign.

This is revolutionary.

1/20 #Bitcoin $BTC I created my own risk management calculator some time ago, 10 entries 10 take profits, avg to position sizes. + many advanced things.

The brilliance of the one and only private algorithmic stable coin in crypto..... A thread. 1/ $XHV $xUSD

There has never been a private algorithmic stable coin before.

The idea that you can store money in crypto, privately, without volatility, is a new concept. $XHV $xUSD 2/

Previously, if you wanted to hide money in crypto, you were subject to the volatility of bitcoin, and you might wake up in the morning to find you're down 45%. Any stable coin option, has never been private, so stable coins have been limited. $XHV $xUSD 3/

All that changed the moment the Haven Protocol introduce their algorithmic stable coin $xUSD backed by their $XHV coin. It gives people a way of storing money outside the volatility of the crypto market, while remaining completely private. 4/

$xUSD is created by a brilliant mint and burn of $XHV, inside its own wallet, without needing an active market to trade on for liquidity. Just owning XHV, provides you the liquidity needed to jump into xUSD. XHV becomes the door way to and from xUSD anytime you need it. /5

THREAD!!
1/ If you are wondering, how much higher the $DFI price can go, let me tell you: much, much, much higer, and this is why: #Bitcoin was the first #DeFi project and its function is that of creating value (it is better than anything else) and is starting to transfer value.

2/ This function is still at the very beginning though. @DeFiChain is covering functions of DeFi that Bitcoin does not have, but is building on the same fundamentals: it is a code fork, it is very interoperable, it needs Bitcoin for its security, and much much more - AND:

3/ it has the additional DeFi function sets of #lending, #exchanging, #staking and #tokenization. Bitcoin derives its value from people seeing it as digital gold. $DFI derives its value from people exchanging, staking, tokenizing and lending on the blockchain - natively!!

4/ This is very different to any other smart contract blockchain such as #Ethereum, etc., where all this is NOT happening onchain, but on the dapps. Big difference, as here the value is not necessarily captured by the coin, rather the 2nd layer projects.

5/ #DeFiChain captures all that value and therefore the metrics of Total Value Locked (TVL) and Total Coins in Staking are absolute essential. The more value is locked, the higher DFI has to go - it cannot be any different, as you couldn't lock the value otherwise.

1/ BITCOIN GAMING 2020 RETROSPECTIVE (a thread)

This has been a challenging year all around, but we’ve witnessed incredible commitment to building on Lightning.

The #bitcoin gaming community specifically used this year as an opportunity to bring people together through gaming.

2/ This year we’ve seen the #bitcoin gaming experiment:

- Onboard new entrants to #btc
- Make microearning for play possible
- Create new ad models to engage audiences
- Complete the in-game circular economy
- Add value to esports, connecting streamers & influencers

And more!

3/ With the cancellation of numerous IRL confs and meetups, the #bitcoin gaming community transitioned to online demos and tournaments.

@MintGox, a next gen esports tournament powered by Bitcoin, was born to showcase companies building games on LN.

4/ Over the past 9 mo, @MintGox featured FPS, fighting, racing, battle royale, mobile games, & more.

The streaming dashboard intro'd a novel way to break the fourth wall, letting viewers interact directly with the gameplay, using sats to drop powerups, inc. bounty, & send tips.

5/ Since inception, @MintGox witnessed incredible growth (over 20% MOM inc. engagement) reaching global audiences and building a dedicated community. 🌏

The most recent MintGox event saw over 5,200 viewers, 10,000+ LN txs, and over 10 million sats (0.1 $BTC) in prizes.

An ELI5 on #Bitcoin.

Think of Bitcoin as a startup founded in 2008, created by a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, initially bootstrapped with his personal capital. No VC funding; just electricity.

His product? An unobtainium.

1/7 🧵

Bitcoin, an unobtainium, is an intangible, rare material, that allows you to store value across decades and generations. It's resistant to confiscation; censorship; theft by inflation; and attacks by corporations, governments, or even aliens - as in Avatar (2009 film).

2/7

In order to possess this rather unobtainable material, you must have a 78-digit random number, also commonly represented as a set of 24 words. Never reveal this to anyone. Ever. Write it down on a piece of paper or etch it on steel; then take it to the grave.

3/7

Bitcoin can be teleported across space (with on-chain transfers) and time (using timelocks); without the possibility of intercepting it in transit. It's either with you or with the counterparty — there's no intermediate state.

It's not magic; simply laws of thermodynamics.

4/7

Satoshi stepped down as the CEO of Bitcoin in 2011. Who runs it today? No one, and everyone, at the same time. It has no board of directors. It's just a set of mathematical equations, unfailingly enforced by very strong network effects. There's no known way of stopping math.

5/7